Sodexo Partnership With The Beryl Companies Breaks Down Barriers to Better Customer Service in Healthcare

Sodexo Partnership With The Beryl Companies Breaks Down Barriers to Better Customer Service in Healthcare

(DALLAS, TX) -- Two of the nation's leading providers of outsourced services to hospitals are collaborating to enhance customer service and improve the healthcare experience for patients.

The Beryl Companies, the largest healthcare-exclusive call center in the U.S., and Sodexo, a global leader of integrated food service and facilities management to hospitals, announced today the creation of a suite of services designed to positively impact the patient encounter before, during and after a visit to the hospital. The partnership is based on the breadth of complementary services each organization provides as well as their mutual focus on the importance of fulfilling all of the patients' expectations beyond their medical needs.

"Consistently providing exceptional customer service is the highest priority for both Beryl and Sodexo and should be as well for every hospital in the country," said Paul Spiegelman, Beryl chief executive officer. "By working with hospitals that understand the importance of this, we believe we can directly impact the patient experience and measurably improve patient satisfaction."

From its state-of-the-art center in Texas, Beryl interacts with five million consumers each year over the phone and online, providing physician referrals, class and event registration, post-discharge customer satisfaction calls, and other services that allow consumers to more efficiently navigate the healthcare system. Sodexo provides services that affect consumers' experiences once on-site, including dining, housekeeping, transportation, laundry and much more. Working together in an unprecedented fashion, client hospitals will be able to quickly and effectively measure and respond to consumer satisfaction feedback through Beryl's CARE Calls (Connecting About Real Experiences) program.

CARE Calls are customer service calls made directly after a patient's hospital visit that allow Beryl to collect and share with Sodexo information about patient experiences faster than ever before.

"Partnering with Beryl allows us to engage with patients before and after their hospital experience," said Tony Freeman, senior vice president of new ventures for Sodexo Health Care. "Hospitals today operate in an environment where HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) and rigorous measuring of patient satisfaction are common. For Sodexo, the Beryl relationship allows us to bring another set of powerful tools to hospitals that are looking to thrive today and in the future."

Spiegelman believes there are many areas in which this partnership will provide value, the most obvious of which being Beryl's ability to quickly solicit patient feedback on the services being provided by Sodexo and then providing that information to client hospitals so they can continuously improve. "By all working together we can uncover those areas of greatest concern to the patient and then find solutions that better the entire experience for everyone," he said. "Continuous improvement is what true customer service is all about."

Through Beryl's thought-leadership arm, The Beryl Institute, Beryl and Sodexo will share data-rich analyses, best practices and customer service improvement opportunities. These will be delivered in the form of white papers, Webinars and case studies.

The partnership with Sodexo is the latest in a long history of initiatives being undertaken by Beryl and The Beryl Institute in the area of customer service in healthcare. "Customer service will be the ultimate differentiator between hospitals, and those who understand this and make a firm commitment in this area will emerge stronger and better positioned than ever before," said Spiegelman.

About Beryl

Beryl, the nation's leading healthcare-exclusive call center, helps organizations grow revenue and build lasting customer relationships by connecting people to healthcare. As a top provider of outsourced telephone and Web-based communications, Beryl delivers 24/7 exemplary customer service during more than five million interactions annually. Since 1985, hundreds of healthcare organizations have relied on Beryl for best-practices insight and data they can use to make more informed decisions about customer acquisition and retention. For more information about Beryl and its educational arm, The Beryl Institute, visit www.beryl.net.

About Sodexo

Sodexo, Inc. (www.sodexousa.com) is a leading integrated facilities management services company in the U.S., Canada and Mexico with $7.7 billion (USD) in annual revenue and 120,000 employees. Sodexo serves more than ten million customers daily in corporations, healthcare, long-term care and retirement centers, schools, college campuses, government, and remote sites. Sodexo, Inc., headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, is a member of Sodexo Group and funds all administrative costs for the Sodexo Foundation (www.sodexofoundation.org), an independent charitable organization that, since its founding in 1999, has made more than $11 million in grants to fight hunger in America.